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Jumping Through Hoops to Get Off the No-Fly List

YOU may be surprised at the number of people who are routinely taken aside at airport security and given the third degree because, it seems, they share a name that is the same as or similar to one of tens of thousands of people who are on official watch lists and no-fly lists.

David Nelson, the elder son of Ozzie and Harriet in the 1950's-vintage television show, was one. Last month, a little boy traveling with his mother was flagged in Houston and allowed to board the plane only after a sensible official appraised the situation and said, essentially, "Come on, the kid's 4."

Last week, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska complained that his wife, Catherine Stevens, has been questioned at checkpoints because her name in its diminutive matches that of the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens. Now known as Yusuf Islam, he has been barred from entering the United States because of activities that the Department of Homeland Security said could be linked to terrorism.

"How do people get off these lists?" Senator Stevens asked Kip Hawley, who heads the Transportation Security Administration. Mr. Hawley was testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, which Senator Stevens heads.

The hearing looked at two agency initiatives in air travel security: Secure Flight and Registered Traveler. The first, Secure Flight, is a government program to consolidate the various watch lists and no-fly lists. The goal is to make them smarter and more secure and to provide a more efficient way for people who do not belong on the lists to get off them.

Senator Conrad Burns of Montana marveled at the difficulty he had in getting help for innocent constituents. He is still working to clear one man. "The only place this guy is dangerous is on a golf course," Mr. Burns said.

Mr. Hawley said 30,000 people on the watch list have gone through the process of seeking redress. It involves things like submitting notarized copies of birth certificates and other personal documents.

If you are successful, you get a letter from the Transportation Security Administration saying you have been cleared. But your name remains on the list. On its Web site, the agency says, "While T.S.A. cannot ensure that these clearance procedures will relieve all delays, the procedures should facilitate a more efficient check-in process."

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A reader, David Hill, an engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University, told me he had been on a watch list ("I and a gazillion other David Hills in the country," he noted) for three years and recently went through the clearance process. "But I still cannot check in online or at the kiosks, and I still get delayed when I check in with a person," he said. "What, precisely, was the point of jumping through all those hoops?" he asked, adding, "Will I ever get off their stupid list?"

That is what the agency wants to fix with Secure Flight. But Mr. Hawley acknowledged that the issues of technology and data confidentiality are keeping progress at a crawl. "We will move forward with a Secure Flight program as expeditiously as possible, but in view of our need to establish trust with all of our stakeholders on the security and privacy of our systems and data, my priority is to ensure that we do it right and not just do it quickly," Mr. Hawley said.

But the other major agency initiative, Registered Traveler, is moving ahead smoothly, and is expected to begin operating at about 40 airports this summer. Here again, though, some critics have expressed concerns about privacy in the program, which will be run by various private companies, and question whether it will really offer sufficient benefits to be worth shelling out $80 to $100 in annual enrollment fees.

Right now, Steven Brill's business, Verified Identity Pass, operates the only Registered Traveler program, in Orlando, Fla. Participants volunteer for a federal background check and, if cleared, purchase an identity card encoded with digitalized biometric data like fingerprints. As of last week, more than 15,000 people had enrolled at Orlando. As the program expands, other private companies are planning to enter the market.

Besides a dedicated lane and a presumption at the checkpoint that you are not a security risk, the benefits of enrollment have not been specified. In a new survey, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives said two-thirds of its members supported the program and said they would reimburse their business travelers for the annual fees.

As to the benefits, Mr. Brill told me last week that they would soon be spelled out clearly by the Transportation Security Administration.

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A version of this article appears in print on February 14, 2006, on Page C00008 of the National edition with the headline: ON THE ROAD; Jumping Through Hoops To Get Off the No-Fly List. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe